Where it all began

THE University of Yale, in New Haven, is the most Anglophilic of American colleges. It was started with a bequest from a proconsul of the British Empire: Elihu Yale, once Governor of Madras. Its buildings are modelled on those of Cambridge, mock Gothic with New England ivy running along the walls. Its pedagogic focus is inspired by Oxford, indifferent faculties of the sciences redeemed by outstanding departments of art, philosophy, literature and, above all, history.

The historians at Yale come from all over the world. Many of their books are published at "home", so to say, by the Yale University Press. For a very long while, the production of these books was overseen by Ed Tripp, a kindly man with mutton chop whiskers who served as Editorial Director of the Yale Press. When I met him, back in 1986, Mr. Tripp told me his real ambition was to publish a history of an English sport mostly unknown to Americans. One of his authors, the South African historian Leonard Thompson, had promised to write a book for him called Cricket, Class and Colonialism.

So far as I know, Professor Thompson's study has never appeared. But another Yale historian, David Underdown, has just published a book called Start of Play: Cricket and Culture in Eighteenth Century England (Penguin Books). Professor Underdown is originally English, but has lived for many years in the United States. Much of the research for his book was conducted in his native land, but I note that he also thanks "the splendid professionalism" of the staffs of the Sterling and Beinecke Libraries at Yale University.

Start of Play is a subtle historical analysis of the origins of cricket. Professor Underdown shows how the game's growth and popularity was linked to rural collectivism. Peasants in Sussex and Kent were bound together by ties of co-operation, sowing and harvesting their crops at the same time. The agricultural calendar provided plenty of time for the sport. The days devoted to feasts and saints' birthdays were used by farmers to organise matches. But this country game played by "fine brawn-faced fellows of farmers" was to be taken over and corrupted by aristocrats. Nobles like the Duke of Richmond and the Duke of Dorset ran their own teams, and liked to play on them as well. These sides, led by lords and peopled by plebeians, were to supersede authentic village teams such as the once-great Hambledon cricket club. Village cricket, suggests Professor Underdown, was destroyed by aristocratic patrons in much the same manner as modern cricket has been destroyed by the greed of corporate sponsors.

Start of Play is the work of a skilled social historian. The rise and decline of rural cricket are explained in terms of geography, politics, finance and warfare. Obscure journals and archival records are used to good effect. When Professor Underdown strays from the cricket, he still contrives to be instructive, or at least entertaining. The village of Hambledon, he tells us, once gave hospitality to King Charles II. In 1651, after losing to Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Worcester, the king stopped at the village of cricketers, disguised as a servant, en route to exile in France. We learn also that the Duke of Dorset had an affair with Marie Antoinette, and left her a cricket bat as a mark of his love.

The Indian reader of Professor Underdown's book comes away with one striking contrast. It was in the villages of southern England that the game first emerged in its modern form. Cricket began in the countryside, but acquired mass popularity and an organised structure in the towns and cities. (The County Championship was instituted in 1864, and its matches have always been played in urban centres). In India, however, cricket was from the beginning a sport of townsmen. In cities like Bombay and Madras, the natives picked up cricket by emulation, watching British soldiers and copying their moves and methods. But the stratified social structure of the Indian village resisted the charms of cricket. A single village team was not possible, of course, but one could not envisage, either, sides composed of members of a specific caste. No Brahmin side would risk taking up a cricketing challenge posed by a team of untouchables. Even now, when Indian villagers watch and discuss cricket, they scarcely play it with any level of seriousness.

The desi reader of Start of Play would also be struck by some notable parallels, the patronage of cricket by aristocrats chief among them. Our Maharajahs and Nawabs were like their Dukes and Earls, running their own teams, paying for professionals to serve on their staff, but spoiling it all by captaining the teams that appeared under their colours. The first representative Indian sides were often led by unqualified or underqualified nobles. The worst of them all was the Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram, who led the 1936 touring side to England. On the previous tour, in 1932, the Maharaja of Porbandar had the good sense to step down in favour of C. K. Nayudu before the Test match. In 1936, "Vizzy" sent home India's best all-rounder, Lala Amaranth, for alleged "insubordination", then insisted on playing the Tests, as captain. Had Amarnath stayed and played, and had Nayudu led the side instead of Vizzy, India might have won its first Test matches in England 35 years before it actually did so.

Start of Play makes for absorbing but also melancholy reading. Published before Hansie Cronje confessed and the Central Bureau of Investigation began its probe, the book tells us that gambling and betting have been with cricket almost since the game began. Some of the illustrations are amusing: as for instance, the single-wicket match between a blacksmith's son and a schoolmaster, played in 1755 for a pound of gingerbread. Other examples are more sobering. In 1740, two Sussex towns played one another for 100 guineas a side. When, in 1755, a side of Old Etonians played three times against a team promoted by Lord March, the stakes were œ1500 a match. The side bets, however, were in excess of œ20,000, this worth perhaps a hundred times that sum today. The bookies "congregated for the big matches at Lord's as eagerly as they did for the racing at Epsom or Ascot."

With stakes such as these feelings ran high. There was, inevitably, a measure of violence, scuffles within the crowd and invasions of the ground in protest at an umpire's decision. More dangerously, players were themselves involved in match-fixing. The great chronicler of Hambledon cricket, John Nyren, suggested that the cricketers were generally "staunch and thorough-going. No thought of treachery ever seemed to have entered their heads... what they did, they did for the love of honour and victory." But he did mention one player who "sold the birthright of his good name for a mess of pottage."

Another early cricket historian, Mary Mitford, blamed the corruptions of the game on its shift from the countryside to the city. She spoke bitterly of the "set match at Lord's Ground for money, hard money, between a certain number of gentlemen and players... people who make a trade of that noble sport, and degrade it into an affair of bettings, and hedgings, and cheatings." This, written in 1832, can serve as an accurate assessment of the game in 2000: an essentially noble sport degraded by a certain number of cheaters and tricksters.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

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